Алекс, вы читаете по-английски, а у меня совершенно не хватает времени, чтобы писать более-менее подробно. Мне близки теории демократии Хелда, считающегося главным в мире специалистом по демократии, Гидденса, Кина и др.
Есть сайт, посвящённый классической работе Хелда "Models of Democracy".
http://politybooks.com/modelsofdemocracy/
где есть материалы с его ключевыми идеями ("What Should Democracy Mean Today?")
Гидденс, следуя за Хелдом, в одной из работ так кратко определяет ключевые черты демократии, одно из лучших определений:
Цитата:
Giddens defines democracy in the following way:
If the various approaches to political democracy be compared, as David Held has shown, most have certain elements in common. They are concerned to secure 'free and equal relations' between individuals in such a way as to promote certain outcomes :
1 The creation of circumstances in which people can develop their potentialities and express their diverse qualities. A key objective here is that each individual should respect others' capabilities as well as their ability to learn and enhance their aptitudes.
2 Protection from the arbitrary use of political authority and coercive power. This presumes that decisions can in some sense be negotiated by those they affect, even if they are taken on behalf of a majority by a minority.
3 The involvement of individuals in determining the conditions of their association. The presumption in this case is that individuals accept the authentic and reasoned character of others' judgements.
4 Expansion of the economic opportunity to develop available resources - including here the assumption that when individuals are relieved of the burdens of physical need they are best able to achieve their aims.
It is the idea of 'autonomy' that links these various aspirations, according to Giddens. He defines the term in this way:
Autonomy means the capacity of individuals to be self-reflective and self-determining: 'to deliberate, judge, choose and act upon different courses of action'. Clearly autonomy in this sense could not be developed while political rights and obligations were closely tied to traditional and fixed prerogatives of property. Once these were dissolved, however, a movement towards autonomy became both possible and seen to be necessary. An overwhelming concern with how individuals might best determine and regulate the conditions of their association is characteristic of virtually all interpretations of modern democracy.
Giddens offers the following 'principle of autonomy' as a summary statement of these aspirations:
... individuals should be free and equal in the determination of the conditions of their own lives; that is, they should enjoy equal rights (and, accordingly, equal obligations) in the specification of the framework, which generates and limits the opportunities available to them, so long as they do not deploy this framework to negate the rights of others.
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И т.д.
http://quadrant4.org/review.html
Я это к тому, что демократия это совсем не что-то само собой разумеющееся, не "тип политической системы" или "государственного устройства", как до сих пор по-советски пишут в учебниках и русскоязычных научных работах, а сложное культурное явление с глубоким идеологическим и философским содержанием, изучению и осознанию которого можно и нужно посвящать значительные интеллектуальные усилия.